The Representation of Reference Cognitive Status in Persian-speaking Autistic Children’s Narrative Discourse Based on Givenness Hierarchy

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as a developmental-neuro disorder, is a disorder that creates impairments in the cognitive performances, such as memory, communication ability and language. One of the determining levels in the individuals’ social life is the ability to produce narrative discourse which entails applying linguistic and cognitive knowledge and skills simultaneously. The purpose of the present study was to provide a comparative study of the reference representation, as a narrative fundamental element, by using referential expressions based on the six cognitive statuses proposed in Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski’s (1993) “Givenness Hierarchy” in the narratives produced by Persian-speaking children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developed (TD) children regarding their age. To this end, 24 children with high-functioning autism and 24 typically developed children, with the age 7, 9, 11 years old (each age group consisting of 8 subjects) were participated in this study. The narratives were elicited by the picture story book “Frog, where are you?” (Mayer, 1969). Then, the gathered data were analyzed by SPSS software. The results of the study indicated that there was differences between the two under study groups in representing the reference based on the cognitive statuses of “Givenness Hierarchy” by referential expressions. Furthermore, the age increase had no effect on the reference representation based on the cognitive statuses of “Givenness Hierarchy” in children with high-functioning autism’s narratives, in contrast to typically developed children’s narratives.